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Dear Fellow Human Being

You are my doctor, my pharmacist, my accountant. You are my coworker, the person running the register at the store, or a kid in the class I’m talking to about dinosaurs. You are all around me and I have something to tell you.

I don’t care.

I do not care who you are fond of, or what your gender is or if that gender is in flux. I do not care any more than I care if you are a straight man or a straight woman or if you go to church, mosque, or temple, or how much melanin is in your skin, or where your ancestors are from. I just simply don’t care. Our relationship has nothing to do with that. It’s none of my business.

You are another human being. I will treat you with respect. I will be polite. I will help you if you need it, and ask you for help if I do. We’re all in this together. Professionally I will treat you just like all of our other customers and I expect the same in return. But I have to focus on what’s relevant to what we’re doing.

I’ve had coworkers, friends, bosses even, that were male, and some that were female, some that were gay, and some straight. It was irrelevant to the job at hand. I’ve tried to treat everyone with respect and dignity. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, unless you are thinking of hooking up with someone, gender and orientation are irrelevant. I dream of a day when who you sleep with, or if you chose to not sleep with anyone, is as unimportant as what hand you hold your fork with. I dream of the day when we stop trying to divide ourselves into little boxes marked Straight, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual, Agender, Gender Queer, Bigender, Gender Variant, Pangender, and whatever else. We are all people. We are all trying to get along. We should all be allies.

So when I say I don’t care, I mean it. Your gender or orientation makes no difference to me. Now if someone tries to put you down, to beat you up, or otherwise make life hard for you, I will be in your corner. I’ve got your back. But then, that’s true regardless of why they’re doing it. Otherwise though, it’s irrelevant. If you are the pilot on my airliner, I just want you to be the best damn pilot in the air. The same goes if you’re my plumber, or the cop in my neighbourhood, or the teacher in the local school, or one of the students. I want you to be the best damn you that you can be. But as far as your private life,